Tag Archives: Yasir Qadhi

Advice From an Older Brother – Yasir Qadhi

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Advice From an Older Brother
From a lecture given at MIST Nationals 2006 by Abu Ammaar Yasir Qadhi
Friday July 21st, 2006

“I would like to start by congratulating everyone for making it to the First MIST National Conference. You are the participants and are the future of this ummah. I would like to take this opportunity to give everyone some advice as an older brother. I too once was in your place and it doesn’t seem like it was too long ago. The realty is very soon you guys are going to take over the place of your parents and your community leaders very soon. Very soon you are going to move onto college. Very soon you are going to start working, and very soon you are going to get marred. Very soon you will have kids and before you know it you will be an uncle or auntie. God Forbid!

Before I start my actual lecture I would like to tell you a little bit about my self. I grew up in a fairly religious family and my parents were religious or you can say practicing parents. I was the average Muslim kid growing up and knew very little about my religion. It wasn’t until I started attending the University of Houston when I realized how ignorant people actually were about the religion of Islam, and how ignorant I was about my own religion. I attended the University of Houston in the early 90s. It was here when the desire for knowledge increased in me. It was hearing some of these people talk about Islam and misrepresenting it which really made my desire increase. The desire increased in me to start studying my own religion increased again and again. I got very involved in the MSA at the University of Houston, I remember being extremely active. I even did many halaqas there for the MSA.

I remember 15 years ago sitting here in this university listening to my professors giving lectures. It was in t his same university. I actually had a class in this same exact building and I remember it like it was yesterday. I remember some of the classes that I took here. I remember taking these classes and thinking to myself, how is this actually going to benefit me? How is knowing all this stuff about chemical engineering going to benefit me. I remember taking thermodynamics and thinking to myself, how is this ever going to make me a good person, how is this going to change me? I remember the first day of class when my professor walked in for thermodynamics class, and I remember exactly what he said. He said, “By the end of this class you will be able to calculate how long it will take an ice cube to melt in a cup of coffee!” I thought about it and said to myself, “SO WHAT??” How does knowing how long it takes an ice cube to melt in a cup of coffee this make me a good person? I had this desire to learn about my religion and went through college with this desire and graduated with a bachelor’s in Chemical Engineering.

I even worked at DOW Chemicals for a year, which is the 2nd largest chemical company in the USA. BASF is the largest. I was assigned a project which many people before me couldn’t do and left the project without completing it. I was assigned to finish stage 1. I, alhamadulillah, managed to get to stage 3 within 3 months and was in the process of finishing it. My boss told me you are going to go places. Money was just pouring in and I could go into a store and actually pick what I wanted to get and there was nothing that was holding me back. For the first time in my life I was able to buy what I want with my own money, without worrying about anything.

All this was not something that really satisfied me. I felt incomplete, and wanted more. I still had the desire to study my own religion. So after doing some research into the Islamic Universities, I decided to go to the University of Medina and they accepted me. I spent 10 years at the University of Medina. I did my Bachelor’s in Hadeeth and my Master’s in Theology or Aqeedah from the college of Da’wah. And currently I am doing my Ph.D. at Yale.
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Understanding the controversies regarding moonsighting – by Yasir Qadi

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Out of all the symbols that Muslims could have chosen to symbolize the unity of Islam, it is indeed ironic that they chose the crescent, which for many signifies the greatest manifestation of division amongst Muslims, at least in Western lands!

Yes, it’s that time of the year again when brothers and sisters frantically begin calling family and friends, asking, “What did Shaykh so-and-so say?” and “Did they see the moon yet?” and, the single most effective question that seals the fate of one’s own fast, “What are YOU going to do?” In this post, I don’t want to go into a detailed tangent regarding which opinion is ‘correct’ or not, but rather lay out some of the issues surrounding the controversy, and offer some practical advice.

The precise conditions required to sight a credible hilal is just one of the many hundreds and thousands of issues of fiqh that our scholars have differed over, since the time of the Companions. And, in the multi-madhab milieu of North America, we are exposed to many such fiqh differences on a regular basis, to the extent that most of us have come to live with and accept the rich diversity of opinion present in our traditional legal schools of thought. However, what makes the issue of the moon-sighting stand out from the usual run-of-the mill fiqh issues is that it affects a joint and communal festival of the Ummah. Other issues, such as whether zakat should be given on jewelry, or whether the qunut be prayed in witr or Fajr, or the finer details of how one prays, do not affect the Ummah as a whole. Typically, these other differences can be left to one’s individual preference with little or no detrimental effect on fellow Muslims. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said of the date of the two Eids and the beginning of the month of Ramadan, as this difference will affect entire communities, and form fault lines between two neighboring masjids, or even within the worshippers of the same masjid.

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